Classical music
Gavin Dixon
Visions de l’Amen was a shoo-in for Belief and Beyond Belief, the year-long festival of art inspired by religious faith. The festival’s goals seem dangerously nebulous – almost anything could fit its remit – but it is hard to imagine a work that better encapsulates "The Search for the Meaning of Life" than Messiaen’s transcendental masterpiece. And the inspired, authoritative reading the work received from pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich silenced any doubts about the wisdom of the enterprise.Brahms, however, was less lucky, and had the odds stacked against him Read more ...
David Nice
To catch the searing desolation of a lover scorned, you need to be the complete artist, with temperament and technique in perfect equilibrium. Mezzo Christine Rice has taken us from Berlioz's Marguerite and Mozart's Donna Elvira at English National Opera via Birtwistle's Ariadne to Haydn's, and - most taxing of all - the end of an affair by telephone in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. The abandoned heroines of Haydn and Poulenc found themselves in the most exposed surroundings possible, the intimacy of a song recital in the giving acoustics of Middle Temple Hall, with only a superlative pianist, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Bergen Philharmonic recently appointed Edward Gardner as its Chief Conductor – ENO’s loss is Bergen’s gain. He is contracted to 2021, so this is the start of a long relationship. On the strength of this concert, the London leg of a UK tour, it is an ideal match. Gardner (pictured below by Benjamin Ealovega) is a dynamic conductor, but one with an impressive ability to accommodate performing traditions. The Bergen Philharmonic recently celebrated its 250th anniversary, so it has plenty of those. The orchestra’s distinctive flavour was much in evidence here, but so too the conductor’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Strauss: Suites from Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck (Reference Recordings)Manfred Honeck’s extended slice of Richard Strauss's Elektra was made in collaboration with the Czech composer Tomáš Ille, Honeck’s inspiration being performances he’d played in with Claudio Abbado with Vienna State Opera in the 1980s. The results are thoroughly absorbing, the joins seamless. We’re used to thinking of Elektra as one of Strauss’s most extreme works, but here it resembles an extravagantly lush symphonic poem. We get a very convincing taste of the full opera, Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Symphony is a word carrying heavy historical baggage. It’s understandable when composers dig for inspiration elsewhere. All the same, Mark-Anthony Turnage has grasped the symphonic nettle with Remembering – In memoriam Evan Scofield which received its first performance last night. Many more will follow, I’d venture.The shock of recognition was not slow in arriving with the opening movement’s construction, bright and angular as steel girders, finding the LSO at their most incisive. There followed an Allegretto-type elegy, then a twisted waltz with trio and repeat. Like Haydn, no less than Read more ...
David Nice
Young Amadeus is growing up in real time with MOZART 250, Classical Opera's ambitious 26-year project following its hero's creative life from childhood to the grave. 2015's start, marking two and a half centuries since the boy wonder's first visit to London, and its sequel had little to show of its main man, but plenty of other, senior composers flourishing in the same years. A full programme of 1767 told us a different story, with a surprise from the 11-year-old that was a kick in the teeth to those of us who thought Mozart was precocious and prodigious but showed no flashes of genius until Read more ...
David Kettle
You can tell it’s a big deal when even a handful of London critics abandon the capital for a Saturday evening in chilly Glasgow. And there were more besides in the capacity crowd for Birtwistle’s opera The Last Supper, given a semi-staged performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – seemingly anyone who’s anyone in Scottish music, from international composers to conductors and orchestra heads, and way beyond too. A big deal it most definitely was – and, miraculously, a free ticket too, since it was essentially a radio recording for a BBC Radio 3 broadcast (scheduled for 28 January) Read more ...
Robert Beale
Colin Matthews’s arrangements for orchestra of the 24 Debussy Préludes (originally commissioned by the Hallé) have been widely admired. The BBC Philharmonic’s concert, conducted by Nicholas Collon, at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday night began with three of Ravel’s five piano Miroirs, two of them orchestrated by Matthews (one a world premiere) and one by the late Steven Stucky.The Matthews approach to Debussy has been compared in places to Ravel’s own orchestral technique (though a direct claim that he transcribed Debussy as Ravel might have done seems over-egging the pudding somewhat). His Read more ...
graham.rickson
Gavin Higgins: Dark Arteries and other works Tredegar Town Band/Ian Porthouse (Tredegar Town Band)The heavy industries associated with British brass bands may be close to extinction, so it’s reassuring to encounter evidence that so many of them are in rude musical health. Ignore brass bands at your peril; recent years have seen schemes such as El Sistema and Stirling’s Big Noise rightly lauded, but the likes of composer Gavin Higgins point out that brass bands have been performing a similar role for centuries in the UK. Raised in the Forest of Dean, he jokes that he “practically came Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Birmingham audiences are a supportive bunch. There was never much likelihood that they’d greet Andris Nelsons’s first Birmingham appearance since he departed for Boston in 2015 with less than the same warmth that they keep for other former CBSO music directors. Even so, he must have been gratified to walk out to a capacity audience – for a programme of Bruckner and Maxwell Davies – and a 30-second ovation, complete with a couple of cheers, before he’d given so much as a downbeat.Of course, the CBSO has already embarked on a whole new adventure, and with an artist as exciting as Read more ...
David Nice
What's not to like, or love, would have to be the sensible response to both the opening programme of Kings Place's year-long Cello Unwrapped festival at Kings Place and its life-enhancing execution. Symmetries abounded – between Alban Gerhardt's double-stopping summons with the "Canto Primo" of Britten's First Cello Suite at the start and his late-night farewell symphony, Kodály's towering Sonata for solo cello; also between two glistening suites for which the label "neo-Baroque" is too narrow, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Stravinsky's Pulcinella. Nicholas Collon and his Aurora players Read more ...
graham.rickson
Aubade – Music by Fauré and Poulenc Västerås Sinfonietta/Howard Shelley (piano and conductor) (dB Productions)January blues? Those afflicted should self-medicate with this collection instead of nipping down to the nearest off-licence. Nothing cheers me up quite like an invigorating blast of Poulenc’s music. Which isn’t to imply that he’s all breezy insouciance. Skilled Poulencians know how to handle the darker corners. Howard Shelley understands exactly how this music should go, and he’s helped by joyous, alert playing from Sweden’s Västerås Sinfonietta. Poulenc’s sweet-natured Sinfonietta, a Read more ...